How many pages should a volume be?

I want to publish a volume of short comic stories (my own and others) but I don't know how many pages a volume should be.

Should it be as thick as a TPB or a manga volume?

To hit a good price point, probably between 100 and 200 pages would be good.

Book stores pretty much told comics publishers that a "graphic novel" is nothing less than 100 pages. More noteworthy they've also forcefully suggested that 6 issues is the perfect story arc length to be adapted to TPB. That's about 132 actual comic pages. Why? Because it hits the ideal price point. Consumers are most happy with what they get for their money with around this length of book.

Is that a good thing to make your decision on? No.

BUT, its free marketing research from large firms.

That is a much better answer than I expected.
I can get between 100 and 200 pages.

well, technically, a VOLUME, should be around 500 pages.... a TPB can be what was stated before.

So is there an established measurement on that? I do believe you, I was just wondering. I had actually not looked on the net to see what quantified a Volume either, and that had been on my mind.

I think you mean publishers enforce this because I've seen plenty of material under 100 pages in the graphic novel section of my local Barnes and Noble (Gentleman Jim and Moby Dick Popup Book are the first to come to mind).

A graphic novel is simply a comic story told in long form and a volume (this is the prose definition) is a collection of periodicals making it the "appropriate" term for trade paper back collections of monthly serials and comic strips.

There's no page minimum although yes, mattchee, the 6-9 serial volume is pretty much industry standard among the larger publishers. As a consumer, I suggest varying your product based on the price. If you plan on selling 10 volumes of 32 page material for 10$, nobody is going to buy your work unless it's printed on 10x15 cardstock with serigraph printing, gold trim, and a custom painted drawing in the inside fold. If you sell said 10 volume 32 page books for 3$, then you have a product (the average consumer likes cheap, disposable material which is why manga anthologies are printed on cheap, crummy paper in Japan; you buy the collected edition if you want something permanent). Alternatively, you could decide to sell 5 volumes of 64 pages for 5$ or 2 volumes of 110 pages for 10$.

Ultimately, it's a price thing. I always ask myself when picking up a book "How satisfied will I be with this product for the price I'm paying?" If you ask yourself this, you can't go wrong.

Im just basing that on the thought that a VOLUME should be a whole complete saga...TPBs are generally just snippets. for example, VIZ has started re-releasing DBZ in larger volume size formats....its around 500 pages and almost encapsulates the whole sagas in 1 to 2 books, whereas in the smaller TPBs it would take 3-4

It's all semantics, I think.

There's no hard set rule as to what a volume is.

And heck, today the cool word is OMNIBUS!

I myself won't publish anything under 100 pages. Anywhere between 100 and 200 works for me.
I plan to release my entire YU+ME series in two giant hardcover volumes with around 500 pages in each book. But that won't be for years. For now, I print them in 160-page trade paperbacks.

I think 10$ for 140 b&w pages sounds reasonable?

I know my first book will be about that lenght. Second one should be shorter, most likely below 100. The third one? If I really do that particular project it could be up to 300 :D

Sounds totally reasonable.

Generally, it seems most people are willing to buy something that's about $1 for every 10 pages up to about 400 pages, if it's printed on much of anything better than newsprint like manga is. For stuff printed on newsprint it seems the going rate is maybe a quarter to a third of that. That's just my observation from what prices things usually seem to be given. But what people are willing to pay is different from what a volume is.

I would say a volume is this: whatever length completes a full story arc in the case of a single story, or whatever length feels like it gives an adequate number and full-feeling set of stories in the compilation. I say that because not all short stories are going to be equal lengths and you could end up feeling like one 90 page story and 10 15 page stories is too much but the one story alone doesn't feel like quite enough so you publish the 90 pager and 3 of the 15 pagers. And in the second book you might feel like the book is perfect with just the remaining 7 15 pagers and nothing else.

I think the first volume of one of my comics is gonna come out Trigun-sized. ()
I don't wanna trim it down, but it is kind of ridiculous. It has exactly 40 chapters as it's written now, though most of them would probably come out to be 6-11 pages long.

This thread is very informative, 'cause I always wondered this stuff. Good thing there's precedents, too.

Great, now I just have to make the b&w version and hope ka-blam allows me to sell both color and b&w. The color one most likely will be around twice as much, but it's only for those who WANT color

I don't see why they wouldn't. That's the route I'm planning to go down with Shades (if I ever get around to sorting it out!) - a budget priced B&W edition and a deluxe full colour edition.

If they did object to having two versions available, however, then unless there's some kind of exclusivity arrangement with them, I guess you could make the B&W version available through Ka-Blam and the colour version available through Lulu or ComiXpress.

Well, after all I heard about comiXpress I don't know... as for Lulu, they just hiked the prices on color to insane levels! from 15 to 20cents per color page! That'd push the price over 30$! No way I'm doing that

Oh, and I don't think there's any exclusivity with ka-blam. People often print preview editions through them for books that will be in stores later. I'm more worried they might want to decline cause it's twice the job for them to assemble two books rather than just one. I'm hoping there's no problem though

My experience with Lulu is that they're a bit on the expensive side. If you want to get set up for distro, though, they might have some cool options. I was warned away from comiXpress by a reliable individual, but have also talked to folks who have used them and were happy.

I happen to use Ka-Blam and am quite happy (getting to my third issue with them).

I don't see why they would have any problem with it. I don't think they would view it as any different than have two totally separate and different comics, which they wouldn't have a problem with. I mean, its not really twice the work since it's two different books. Same thing as if it were in different languages, etc. Frankly I think they'd be happy since its more opportunity for sales, and you're covering your bases on what people may want.




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Great, thanks for the info. I hope it is just my paranoia speaking :D

My experience with different printers:

ComixPress: Total shit. Do not use them. They don't coat their covers so the ink rubs off on everything, they have some of the worst customer service I've ever encountered, and the overall quality is just awful.

Lulu: Yes, they're kind of expensive, but you get more than what you pay for. The books I got from them are GORGEOUSLY printed, nice heavy stock, wonderful color printing. Would cost you around $7 for a B&W book, really expensive for color.

CreateSpace.com: Just started using them. The books are not quite as high quality as lulu, but they're still professionally done. (Lulu really is top-of-the-line with their printers, so it's hard to be better than them quality-wise.) The prices are incredibly affordable, even for color books. And bonus: they put it on Amazon for you and give you an ISBN number. Costs around $2.50 for a B&W book, and around $11 for a color book, less than half of lulu.

I don't have any experience with Kablam, but the samples I got from them were decent enough. I recommend Createspace, though.